CLOAK GAMES: Morvilind vs. Tarlia
Working on CLOAK OF DRAGONS today, and considering the difference between the personalities of Morvilind and Tarlia.
(Note that this post will have SPOILERS!!! for most of the CLOAK GAMES series.)
Morvilind was brilliant and driven and possessed remarkable focus and clarity of vision. That said, he was arrogant, vindictive, and downright petty, and his usual approach to his human employees was to terrorize them into following him. He had the singular gift of alienating all the other Elven nobles with his harsh personality and his contempt for them. Technically, he was a vassal of Duke Tamirlas of Milwaukee, but Tamirlas would never have dared to give Morvilind orders. Tarlia was the only one who could ever command Morvilind.
This, as you can imagine, caused him a lot of problems. He had a remarkable gift for alienating people who otherwise would have been enthusiastic supporters of his ultimate goal. (Riordan and Russell both pointed this out to him in MAGE FALL.) Morvilind might have accomplished his goals much sooner and much more easily if he hadn’t driven off everyone who might have helped him otherwise.
Tarlia, by contrast, is much more charming and charismatic, and very good at getting people to help her of their own free will. Morvilind was her teacher and tutor for her childhood and young adulthood, but she was intelligent enough to grasp the failures in Morvilind’s approach and avoid his mistakes. Tarlia is not above using the stick when necessary and can be just as ruthless as Morvilind, but she also offers a very large carrot. That’s one of the reasons the Rebels never managed to gain mass popular support (much to Nicholas Connor’s constant annoyance) – the High Queen has most human societies set up so that people are loyal to her and gain benefits from the loyalty. Veterans who successfully complete their terms of service to their nobles receive benefits that no one else can (legally) have.
She values loyalty a great deal, sometimes more than competence. Tarlia would regard Darth Vader’s school of “You have failed me for the last time, admiral” management as appallingly wasteful. If her servants cannot learn from their mistakes, how else will they achieve excellence? She sometimes values loyalty more than competence to her own detriment. Too much incompetence, though, and the servant in question will be shunted off to the side – incompetent Elven nobles tend to find themselves given modest sinecures with no actual authority. Human officials who make too many mistakes suddenly feel inspired to retire to “spend more time with their families.”
But the one thing guaranteed to earn Tarlia’s merciless fury is betrayal. She can forgive anything but betrayal. And if she is betrayed, her vengeful rage can make Morvilind look mild by comparison. Her husband and eldest son both betrayed her, and because of that, she didn’t shed a single tear for their deaths.
-JM
Tarlia also has a sense of humor. With humor comes great power.
I liked in Mage Fall when Morvilind growled about how Tarlia had been betrayed many many times…..and then like an hour later carried on a lengthy conversation with a woman who had betrayed him. The man didn’t really know himself at all did he?
To further the point, his female agents were described as being “obsessed with vengeance to the point of a psychosis.” More or less. So they were brilliant, calculating, vindictive, and obsessed with a particular task…..hmmmm guess he would have never compared himself to a human female though, would he?
Morvilind would have said that all his shadow agents’ good qualities came from his training and all their bad qualities were a result of their own internal weaknesses. 🙂
I realize this is off topic for this but I have a question about nadia’s healing spell. How can she make it extend her lifetime like morvilind said she could and for how long. Also will we get to see her learn to shape shift eventually like nicholas could? Or was that only because he had a dark one inside him.
Also and this is the last question how fast can nadia cast spells? Is it just her thinking them or does she have to make gestures with her hand and such. Could she for example cast a shield spell before one of the rebels could pull a trigger.
It will extend her life considerably, but not indefinitely.
Nicholas could only shapeshift because he had a Dark One inside him. There are shapeshifting spells, and Nadia will encounter some entities who have them in the next book.
Nadia can cast spells very quickly. She just needs to think and focus and sometimes gesture. If she’s not taken by surprise, she could get a Shield up before someone shot her.
I know I am weird but Does that mean she could live like four hundred years?
No one knows. A human hasn’t mastered the regeneration spell to that extent ever before, so we’re sailing into uncharted territory here.